Honore de Balzac - Analytical Studies

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The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less
acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in
order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the
ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of
the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an
additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both
are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping.
From this springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is
infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a
household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity,
of chicanery.

Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity
to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.

What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current
precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from
anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be
determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters
this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: "Ah! when I was a
bachelor!"

Her husband's bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, "My dear
deceased," is to a widow's second husband. These two stings produce
wounds which are never completely healed.

Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five
Hundred: "We are on a volcano!--The house no longer has a head, the
time to come to an understanding has arrived.--You talk of happiness,
Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions,
you have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the
discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority.
--We must reform our internal affairs."

Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, "Down with the
dictator!" For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they
can put him down.

"When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean
napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a
determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have
you done with it?"

"Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you
numerous cares?" says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband.
"Take the key of the money-box back,--but do you know what will
happen? I am ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to
get the merest necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade
your wife, or bring in conflict two contrary, hostile interests--"

Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition
of marriage.

"Be perfectly easy, dear," resumes Caroline, seating herself in her
chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, "I will never ask you for
anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I'll do--you don't know me
yet."

"Well, what will you do?" asks Adolphe; "it seems impossible to joke
or have an explanation with you women. What will you do?"

"It doesn't concern you at all."

"Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor--"

"Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I
will keep it a dead secret."

"Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?"

Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and
proceeds to walk up and down the room.

"There now, tell me, what will you do?" he repeats after much too
prolonged a silence.

"I shall go to work, sir!"

At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat,
detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north
wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.

THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM.

On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an
infernal system, the effect of which is to make you regret your
victory every hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have
one more such triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes,
accused of having smothered his wife between two mattresses, like
Shakespeare's Othello. Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her
submission is positively killing. On every occasion she assassinates
Adolphe with a "Just as you like!" uttered in tones whose sweetness is
something fearful. No elegiac poet could compete with Caroline, who
utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in action, elegy in speech: her smile
is elegiac, her silence is elegiac, her gestures are elegiac. Here are
a few examples, wherein every household will find some of its
impressions recorded:

AFTER BREAKFAST. "Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars' grand ball
you know."

"Yes, love."

AFTER DINNER. "What, not dressed yet, Caroline?" exclaims Adolphe, who
has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.

He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong
conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist.
Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a
gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly
arranged. Caroline's gloves have already seen wear and tear.

"I am ready, my dear."

"What, in that dress?"

"I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!"

"I'll go alone," says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.

"I dare say you are very glad to," returns Caroline, in a captious
tone, "it's plain enough from the way you are got up."

Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe.
Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She
is waiting for dinner to be served.

"Sir," says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, "the cook
doesn't know what on earth to do!"

"What's the matter?"

"You said nothing to her, sir: and she has only two side-dishes, the
beef, a chicken, a salad and vegetables."

"Caroline, didn't you give the necessary orders?"

"How did I know that you had company, and besides I can't take it upon
myself to give orders here! You delivered me from all care on that
point, and I thank heaven for it every day of my life."

Madame de Fischtaminel has called to pay Madame Caroline a visit. She
finds her coughing feebly and nearly bent double over her embroidery.

"Ah, so you are working those slippers for your dear Adolphe?"

Adolphe is standing before the fire-place as complacently as may be.

"No, madame, it's for a tradesman who pays me for them: like the
convicts, my labor enables me to treat myself to some little
comforts."

Adolphe reddens; he can't very well beat his wife, and Madame de
Fischtaminel looks at him as much as to say, "What does this mean?"

"You cough a good deal, my darling," says Madame de Fischtaminel.

"Oh!" returns Caroline, "what is life to me?"

Caroline is seated, conversing with a lady of your acquaintance, whose
good opinion you are exceedingly anxious to retain. From the depths of
the embrasure where you are talking with some friends, you gather,
from the mere motion of her lips, these words: "My husband would have
it so!" uttered with the air of a young Roman matron going to the
circus to be devoured. You are profoundly wounded in your several
vanities, and wish to attend to this conversation while listening to
your guests: you thus make replies which bring you back such inquiries
as: "Why, what are you thinking of?" For you have lost the thread of
the discourse, and you fidget nervously with your feet, thinking to
yourself, "What is she telling her about me?"

Adolphe is dining with the Deschars: twelve persons are at table, and
Caroline is seated next to a nice young man named Ferdinand, Adolphe's
cousin. Between the first and second course, conjugal happiness is the
subject of conversation.

"There is nothing easier than for a woman to be happy," says Caroline
in reply to a woman who complains of her husband.

"Tell us your secret, madame," says M. de Fischtaminel agreeably.

"A woman has nothing to do but to meddle with nothing to consider
herself as the first servant in the house or as a slave that the
master takes care of, to have no will of her own, and never to make an
observation: thus all goes well."

This, delivered in a bitter tone and with tears in her voice, alarms
Adolphe, who looks fixedly at his wife.

"You forget, madame, the happiness of telling about one's happiness,"
he returns, darting at her a glance worthy of the tyrant in a
melodrama.

Quite satisfied with having shown herself assassinated or on the point
of being so, Caroline turns her head aside, furtively wipes away a
tear, and says:

"Happiness cannot be described!"

This incident, as they say at the Chamber, leads to nothing, but
Ferdinand looks upon his cousin as an angel about to be offered up.

Some one alludes to the frightful prevalence of inflammation of the
stomach, or to the nameless diseases of which young women die.

"Ah, too happy they!" exclaims Caroline, as if she were foretelling
the manner of her death.

Adolphe's mother-in-law comes to see her daughter. Caroline says, "My
husband's parlor:" "Your master's chamber." Everything in the house
belongs to "My husband."

"Why, what's the matter, children?" asks the mother-in-law; "you seem
to be at swords' points."

"Oh, dear me," says Adolphe, "nothing but that Caroline has had the
management of the house and didn't manage it right, that's all."

"She got into debt, I suppose?"

"Yes, dearest mamma."

"Look here, Adolphe," says the mother-in-law, after having waited to
be left alone with her son, "would you prefer to have my daughter
magnificently dressed, to have everything go on smoothly, _without its
costing you anything_?"

Imagine, if you can, the expression of Adolphe's physiognomy, as he
hears _this declaration of woman's rights_!

Caroline abandons her shabby dress and appears in a splendid one. She
is at the Deschars': every one compliments her upon her taste, upon
the richness of her materials, upon her lace, her jewels.

"Ah! you have a charming husband!" says Madame Deschars. Adolphe
tosses his head proudly, and looks at Caroline.

"My husband, madame! I cost that gentleman nothing, thank heaven! All
I have was given me by my mother."

Adolphe turns suddenly about and goes to talk with Madame de
Fischtaminel.

After a year of absolute monarchy, Caroline says very mildly one
morning:

"How much have you spent this year, dear?"

"I don't know."

"Examine your accounts."

Adolphe discovers that he has spent a third more than during
Caroline's worst year.

"And I've cost you nothing for my dress," she adds.

Caroline is playing Schubert's melodies. Adolphe takes great pleasure
in hearing these compositions well-executed: he gets up and
compliments Caroline. She bursts into tears.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, I'm nervous."

"I didn't know you were subject to that."

"O Adolphe, you won't see anything! Look, my rings come off my
fingers: you don't love me any more--I'm a burden to you--"

She weeps, she won't listen, she weeps afresh at every word Adolphe
utters.

"Suppose you take the management of the house back again?"

"Ah!" she exclaims, rising sharply to her feet, like a spring figure
in a box, "now that you've had enough of your experience! Thank you!
Do you suppose it's money that I want? Singular method, yours, of
pouring balm upon a wounded heart. No, go away."

"Very well, just as you like, Caroline."

This "just as you like" is the first expression of indifference
towards a wife: and Caroline sees before her an abyss towards which
she had been walking of her own free will.

THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN.

The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After
brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles
change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good
fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders,
when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications
are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is
a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French
Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his
tail in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has
come.

Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband
back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her
imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands
pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her
face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst
of her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments.

Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed
between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a
family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges
his gaze at will into his neighbor's domains. There is a necessity for
mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can
escape. At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant
opposite is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has
put the rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and
vice-versa. Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits
of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman
opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old
bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair
front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination.
At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself--too
late, like the chaste Susanne,--the prey of the delighted lorgnette of
an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who
becomes criminal gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young
gentleman, who, for the present, works without wages, and is only
nineteen years old, appears before the sight of a pious old lady, in
the simple apparel of a man engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up
is never relaxed, while prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of
forgetfulness. Curtains are not always let down in time. A woman, just
before dark, approaches the window to thread her needle, and the
married man opposite may then admire a head that Raphael might have
painted, and one that he considers worthy of himself--a National Guard
truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art
thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city
essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person's life to be
decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year.
Virtues are dearer than vices in Paris.

Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins
which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last
discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon,
and newly established in the first story directly in view of her
window. She spends her time in the most exciting observations. The
blinds are closed early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has
arisen at eight o'clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid
preparing a bath or a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline
sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises
the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness.
Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the
gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently one against the
other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air.
Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret
the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation and others
not, made by the shadows of these two young people on the curtains,
one night when they have forgotten to close the shutters. The young
woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, waiting for her absent
husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the rumble of a cab at the
street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from her movements, it is
easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: "'Tis he!"

"How they love each other!" says Caroline to herself.

By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly
ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the
opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not
without depravity, but then Caroline's intention sanctifies the means!

"Adolphe," she says, "we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest
woman, a brunette--"

"Oh, yes," returns Adolphe, "I know her. She is a friend of Madame de
Fischtaminel's: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming
man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he's crazy about her.
His office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street
are madame's. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about
his happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he's really quite
tiresome."

"Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame
Foullepointe to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to
make her husband love her so much: have they been married long?"

"Five years, just like us."

"O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately
acquainted. Am I as pretty as she?"

"Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren't my
wife, I declare, I shouldn't know which--"

"You are real sweet to-day. Don't forget to invite them to dinner
Saturday."

"I'll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on 'Change."

"Now," says Caroline, "this young woman will doubtless tell me what
her method of action is."

Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks
through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and
exclaims, "Two perfect doves!"

For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame
Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most
virtuous couples of her society. She has brought out all her
resources: she has ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken
the silver out of the chest: she means to do all honor to the model of
wives.

"My dear, you will see to-night," she says to Madame Deschars, at the
moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, "the
most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a
young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with _such_ manners! His
head is like Lord Byron's, and he's a real Don Juan, only faithful:
he's discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps
obtain a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees
them, will blush at his conduct, and--"

The servant announces: "Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe."

Madame Foullepointe, a pretty brunette, a genuine Parisian, slight and
erect in form, the brilliant light of her eye quenched by her long
lashes, charmingly dressed, sits down upon the sofa. Caroline bows to
a fat gentleman with thin gray hair, who follows this Paris
Andalusian, and who exhibits a face and paunch fit for Silenus, a
butter-colored pate, a deceitful, libertine smile upon his big, heavy
lips,--in short, a philosopher! Caroline looks upon this individual
with astonishment.

"Monsieur Foullepointe, my dear," says Adolphe, presenting the worthy
quinquagenarian.

"I am delighted, madame," says Caroline, good-naturedly, "that you
have brought your father-in-law [profound sensation], but we shall
soon see your husband, I trust--"

"Madame--!"

Everybody listens and looks. Adolphe becomes the object of every one's
attention; he is literally dumb with amazement: if he could, he would
whisk Caroline off through a trap, as at the theatre.

"This is Monsieur Foullepointe, my husband," says Madame Foullepointe.

Caroline turns scarlet as she sees her ridiculous blunder, and Adolphe
scathes her with a look of thirty-six candlepower.

"You said he was young and fair," whispers Madame Deschars. Madame
Foullepointe,--knowing lady that she is,--boldly stares at the
ceiling.

A month after, Madame Foullepointe and Caroline become intimate.
Adolphe, who is taken up with Madame de Fischtaminel, pays no
attention to this dangerous friendship, a friendship which will bear
its fruits, for--pray learn this--

Axiom.--Women have corrupted more women than men have ever loved.

A SOLO ON THE HEARSE.

After a period, the length of which depends on the strength of
Caroline's principles, she appears to be languishing; and when
Adolphe, anxious for decorum's sake, as he sees her stretched out upon
the sofa like a snake in the sun, asks her, "What is the matter, love?
What do you want?"

"I wish I was dead!" she replies.

"Quite a merry and agreeable wish!"

"It isn't death that frightens me, it's suffering."

"I suppose that means that I don't make you happy! That's the way with
women!"

Adolphe strides about the room, talking incoherently: but he is
brought to a dead halt by seeing Caroline dry her tears, which are
really flowing artistically, in an embroidered handkerchief.

"Do you feel sick?"

"I don't feel well. [Silence.] I only hope that I shall live long
enough to see my daughter married, for I know the meaning, now, of the
expression so little understood by the young--_the choice of a
husband_! Go to your amusements, Adolphe: a woman who thinks of the
future, a woman who suffers, is not at all diverting: come, go and
have a good time."

"Where do you feel bad?"

"I don't feel bad, dear: I never was better. I don't feel anything.
No, really, I am better. There, leave me to myself."

This time, being the first, Adolphe goes away almost sad.

A week passes, during which Caroline orders all the servants to
conceal from her husband her deplorable situation: she languishes, she
rings when she feels she is going off, she uses a great deal of ether.
The domestics finally acquaint their master with madame's conjugal
heroism, and Adolphe remains at home one evening after dinner, and
sees his wife passionately kissing her little Marie.

"Poor child! I regret the future only for your sake! What is life, I
should like to know?"

"Come, my dear," says Adolphe, "don't take on so."

"I'm not taking on. Death doesn't frighten me--I saw a funeral this
morning, and I thought how happy the body was! How comes it that I
think of nothing but death? Is it a disease? I have an idea that I
shall die by my own hand."

The more Adolphe tries to divert Caroline, the more closely she wraps
herself up in the crape of her hopeless melancholy. This second time,
Adolphe stays at home and is wearied to death. At the third attack of
forced tears, he goes out without the slightest compunction. He
finally gets accustomed to these everlasting murmurs, to these dying
postures, these crocodile tears. So he says:

"If you are sick, Caroline, you'd better have a doctor."

"Just as you like! It will end quicker, so. But bring a famous one, if
you bring any."

At the end of a month, Adolphe, worn out by hearing the funereal air
that Caroline plays him on every possible key, brings home a famous
doctor. At Paris, doctors are all men of discernment, and are
admirably versed in conjugal nosography.

"Well, madame," says the great physician, "how happens it that so
pretty a woman allows herself to be sick?"

"Ah! sir, like the nose of old father Aubry, I aspire to the tomb--"

Caroline, out of consideration for Adolphe, makes a feeble effort to
smile.

"Tut, tut! But your eyes are clear: they don't seem to need our
infernal drugs."

"Look again, doctor, I am eaten up with fever, a slow, imperceptible
fever--"

And she fastens her most roguish glance upon the illustrious doctor,
who says to himself, "What eyes!"

"Now, let me see your tongue."

Caroline puts out her taper tongue between two rows of teeth as white
as those of a dog.

"It is a little bit furred at the root: but you have breakfasted--"
observes the great physician, turning toward Adolphe.

"Oh, a mere nothing," returns Caroline; "two cups of tea--"

Adolphe and the illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor
wonders whether it is the husband or the wife that is trifling with
him.

"What do you feel?" gravely inquires the physician.

"I don't sleep."

"Good!"

"I have no appetite."

"Well!"

"I have a pain, here."

The doctor examines the part indicated.

"Very good, we'll look at that by and by."

"Now and then a shudder passes over me--"

"Very good!"

"I have melancholy fits, I am always thinking of death, I feel
promptings of suicide--"

"Dear me! Really!"

"I have rushes of heat to the face: look, there's a constant trembling
in my eyelid."

"Capital! We call that a trismus."

The doctor goes into an explanation, which lasts a quarter of an hour,
of the trismus, employing the most scientific terms. From this it
appears that the trismus is the trismus: but he observes with the
greatest modesty that if science knows that the trismus is the
trismus, it is entirely ignorant of the cause of this nervous
affection, which comes and goes, appears and disappears--"and," he
adds, "we have decided that it is altogether nervous."

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